Dan Pink talking about Drive

Dan Pink has just had his latest book, Drive, published in the US. You may be familiar with his previous 2 ground breaking books, A Whole New Mind and Free Agent Nation. His work is always highly stimulating and readable. This is an interview with him discussing his new book.

This is great! So good to hear someone talking about the importance of intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation. As a coach, I spend quite a lot of time helping my clients to find motivation in themselves and to build and trust their intuition. I agree that extrisic motivators – carrot and stick/clear compelling and focused goals, for example – have a place. And I know, as Dan says in this interview, that they work well for simple and short-term tasks. For longer term and more diverse and complex goals, they’re inadequate. We’re people, not dogs!

I love this piece, but I do have one major issue with it. The whole inspiring discussion about motivation starts with the premise of ‘pay people enough money to take money off the table as an issue.’ That sounds very straight forward, but I find in practice that it is much more complex than that. I do agree that his whole examination of motivation is correct if you satisfy that initial premise, but I think satisfying it is more difficult that he glibly comments. Not just for employers, but for employees.

It would be nice and simple if companies would say ‘here is our pay deal, take it if it takes-money-off-the-table otherwise go work elsewhere.’ In reality, people take jobs for a variety of reasons and often choose a job that ‘does not take it off the table’. Then you have a staffer on board for whom the inspired motivation scheme you have carefully crafted and empowered will be weakened and undermined.

I guess my advice would be to really assess whether ‘money if off the table’. If it is, this piece is great advice on how to structure motivation. If it is not, then you have a more complicated motivational dynamic at hand. These concepts might be helpful, but more traditional ‘incentives’ can also play a useful role.